The main attraction of this film is the opportunity to watch two outstanding, idiosyncratic actors, originals with a host of inferior imitators, but from totally different traditions, and varying styles and histories, playing off each other. In this respect, its nearest relative is the 1964 comedy 'Bedtime Story', which pitted the anguished master of American Method, Marlon Brando, against suave British comedian, David Niven.
The attraction is less in the exercise of skill than the clash, the promise of sparks, of colliding visions of what it is to be an actor. This requires a thorough awareness of the actor's persona and a steady dismantling of it. 'Glory' would seem to be far removed from De Niro's normal territory - it is set in the criminal milieu, yes, but he is a cop. Not only that, but his habitual volatility is replaced by a shyness and reluctance that is not so far from cowardice.
On the other hand, like Travis Bickle, Mad Dog is an alienated loner in the big city, confronted in the course of his daily work with random horror. And although he seems quite sweet, there is a menace in those familiar mannerisms that bespeak a mortified pride that can only take so much, that will finally erupt in primal, la Motta-like violence. When this point comes, however, it's not quite what we expect. Well, I certainly didn't expect to see Bill Murray kicking De Niro in front of friends and gangsters like he was a pestering, rather than mad, dog. And Mad Dog's violence is only the last straw after his characteristic humiliating obsequiousness doesn't get the required result, and to which he is eager to return rather than face more kicking. It is a violence that has none of the warped grace of Bickle, being more the gallumphing ineptness of an inebriate. That de Niro manages to make this potentially ridiculous character sympathetic is a tribute to his talent. He can't make him very interesting though.
Although de Niro, like Brando, is the 'great' 'actor' in this concept, it is the frustratingly fleeting glimpses of Murray we crave. His stand-up comic/gangster loan shark/ slave trader is an extraordinary creation, a conception of pure evil on the level of Kurtz, flattened out by amiable amorality and style until it becomes nothing, neither friend nor foe, neurotic nor bosom buddy; a terrifying unpredictability normalised by unruffled banality.
it's a shame, therefore, that the film doesn't really work. One problem is the script, which doesn't really do anything, and subverts the old Hawksian narrative of childlike hero/coward and making him a man, without really putting anything in its place. The most serious gap, however, is the 'neutrality' effecting character, plot, direction - where 'Bedtime Story''s scientific equation created chemical sparks, driven by immorality; Murray and de NIro's conflict is neutered by amorality.
The role of Thurman suffers in this, and is almost irrelevant; similarly the frightening violence of the opening ten minutes is cancelled out by the following comedy-gangster tone which never hits the right note, although the scene where Mad Dog finally loses his virginity and plays along to Louis Prima at the scene of a murder is priceless. MacNaughton's usual themes of voyeurism and surveillance - Mad Dog is a police photographer who peeps at the lovers across the yard - are ineffectively developed. The whole thing feels like one of those synthetic neo-noirs made on the 'Fallen Angels' TV programme.
The attraction is less in the exercise of skill than the clash, the promise of sparks, of colliding visions of what it is to be an actor. This requires a thorough awareness of the actor's persona and a steady dismantling of it. 'Glory' would seem to be far removed from De Niro's normal territory - it is set in the criminal milieu, yes, but he is a cop. Not only that, but his habitual volatility is replaced by a shyness and reluctance that is not so far from cowardice.
On the other hand, like Travis Bickle, Mad Dog is an alienated loner in the big city, confronted in the course of his daily work with random horror. And although he seems quite sweet, there is a menace in those familiar mannerisms that bespeak a mortified pride that can only take so much, that will finally erupt in primal, la Motta-like violence. When this point comes, however, it's not quite what we expect. Well, I certainly didn't expect to see Bill Murray kicking De Niro in front of friends and gangsters like he was a pestering, rather than mad, dog. And Mad Dog's violence is only the last straw after his characteristic humiliating obsequiousness doesn't get the required result, and to which he is eager to return rather than face more kicking. It is a violence that has none of the warped grace of Bickle, being more the gallumphing ineptness of an inebriate. That de Niro manages to make this potentially ridiculous character sympathetic is a tribute to his talent. He can't make him very interesting though.
Although de Niro, like Brando, is the 'great' 'actor' in this concept, it is the frustratingly fleeting glimpses of Murray we crave. His stand-up comic/gangster loan shark/ slave trader is an extraordinary creation, a conception of pure evil on the level of Kurtz, flattened out by amiable amorality and style until it becomes nothing, neither friend nor foe, neurotic nor bosom buddy; a terrifying unpredictability normalised by unruffled banality.
it's a shame, therefore, that the film doesn't really work. One problem is the script, which doesn't really do anything, and subverts the old Hawksian narrative of childlike hero/coward and making him a man, without really putting anything in its place. The most serious gap, however, is the 'neutrality' effecting character, plot, direction - where 'Bedtime Story''s scientific equation created chemical sparks, driven by immorality; Murray and de NIro's conflict is neutered by amorality.
The role of Thurman suffers in this, and is almost irrelevant; similarly the frightening violence of the opening ten minutes is cancelled out by the following comedy-gangster tone which never hits the right note, although the scene where Mad Dog finally loses his virginity and plays along to Louis Prima at the scene of a murder is priceless. MacNaughton's usual themes of voyeurism and surveillance - Mad Dog is a police photographer who peeps at the lovers across the yard - are ineffectively developed. The whole thing feels like one of those synthetic neo-noirs made on the 'Fallen Angels' TV programme.